Are massive battery banks a good idea?

Massive battery banks are one answer. But they’re expensive and best at storing energy for a few hours, not for days long stretches of cloudy weather or calm. Another strategy is to use surplus energy to heat a large mass of material to ultrahigh temperatures, then tap the energy as needed.

Can a battery store electricity for $10 a kilowatt hour?

Lenert and others are eyeing their own startups. And Henry recently launched a venture—Thermal Battery Corp.—to commercialize his group’s technology, which he estimates could store electricity for $10 per kilowatt-hour of capacity, less than one-tenth the cost of grid-scale lithium-ion batteries.

Can a thermal storage system save energy?

“Storing energy as heat can be very cheap,” even for many days at a time, says Alina LaPotin, an MIT graduate student and first author of the current Nature paper. Henry and others add that thermal storage systems are modular, unlike fossil fuel plants, which are most efficient at a massive, gigawatt scale.

Are battery banks a good idea for a greener electrical grid?

That’s one of the most vexing questions standing in the way of a greener electrical grid. Massive battery banks are one answer. But they’re expensive and best at storing energy for a few hours, not for days long stretches of cloudy weather or calm.